Sometimes people say they are in studio, in hospital, or going to prom — but there’s no the in there! In plenty of dialects, it’s common to drop such articles, making anarthrous nouns, or nouns without articles. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Nouns Without Articles”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, this is Lori.
Hi, Lori, where are you calling us from?
I’m calling from Fairfax, Virginia.
Welcome to the show, Lori.
How can we help you?
Well, I have a question.
Last spring, around the time that everybody’s going to the prom, I almost lost my mind listening to people talk about going to prom.
And I just wondered, what has happened to the article, The?
And you hear it, you know, more and more.
I listen to public radio, and the local guy here talks about being in studio.
He’s in studio, and then people are in hospital.
Now, that I think is more a British term.
Maybe I’m wrong.
But what’s happened to the?
And why do people talk about going to prom?
What happened to the the?
There’s a shortage.
A shortage of the?
That’s so sad.
It is.
It sounds so wrong on my ears.
It’s an austerity measure.
No.
No, the answer is a little more complicated than that.
The answer is actually really interesting, Laurie.
You’ve been in a collision.
No, a collision.
Yeah, you’ve been in a dialect collision where your dialect has encountered other dialects where they have more of what are called anarthrist nouns.
And that fancy word means that they do not have an article in front of them.
And it just depends where you’re from.
In parts of this country, we say, I’m going to prom, right?
And other parts of the country say, I’m going to the prom.
And whether or not you have the article just depends on what people around you say.
And any attempt to find rhyme or reason to this usually is defeated.
But one thing that we do know about whether or not people add the the, it’s whether or not you’re going to go to the place, how should we put this, the definitive canonical ultimate epitome of a place for a thing.
For example, I can go to school.
And if I tell you that, what am I doing?
You’re just going to school.
Yeah, I’m going to take classes and listen to a teacher and study and do exams.
However, I can go to the school for a PTA meeting.
And I use the the for school to indicate that I’m going there for something which the school isn’t ordinarily thought of.
Right. It’s more of a specific.
There’s like indefinite and definite nouns.
I did teach English for a number of years.
Very good. Exactly. Very good.
But the thes is more specific.
I want the dog, you know, not a dog.
And so part of it is cultural, the way you think of your institutions.
Part of it is dialect, what you inherited from the people who came before you.
And that dialect has some roots in, apparently, some of the varieties of English spoken in the United States have a strong influence, not from English English, the English spoken by the people in England, but the English spoken by people in Ireland and Scotland.
And so we have all these Scots-Irish influences here.
And the varieties of their languages that aren’t English, Gaelic and Gaelic, they have different kinds of rules for their articles.
And so they use those.
It was also in their English.
We picked those up in the United States.
And so you have these pockets of interesting the-less-ness, you know, no the, article-ness-ness, and arthriss-ness.
And arthriss-ness.
In the United States.
A dearth of the.
What’s that?
A dearth of the.
A dearth of the.
Very good.
A dearth of the.
As a result of a dialect collision.
I love this.
A dialect collision.
And so what you are doing is kind of what I often call, you’ve probably heard me say this, a little bit of field work.
You’re actually out there collecting evidence and kind of establishing these rules.
And I bet you if you just take some really simple notes about who says the prom and who doesn’t, you’ll find some commonalities.
Maybe they’re from another side of the state.
Maybe they’re from a different community, ethnic community.
Maybe they’re older or younger.
And you’ll start to see these patterns kind of fill out your note card.
You’re like, oh, I see a pattern here.
Okay?
So that’s interesting.
Yeah, I could do that.
Yeah.
And arthris nouns.
What a great word.
I know.
That makes my day.
Yeah.
Come back to us when you get some information.
I’d love to hear what’s happening there, all right?
All right.
Thank you, Martha and Grant.
Okay.
Thanks, Lori.
Bye-bye.
Thanks, Lori.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
Call us with your language questions.
The number is 877-929-9673.
I’ve very recently been exposed to a language nuance in which I would say “Do you want to go with me?” or “Can I go with you?” some folks will say “Do you want to go (or come) with?” or “Can I go (or come) with?” Is that the same or similar phenomenon to what was described in this segment of the broadcast?